“Didn’t Sanducci say that a mother’s blood is stronger?”
“Sanducci says a lot. I try not to listen.”
His lips twitched. He looked away, and I knew that he wasn’t going to tell me how he’d acquired his magic. I opened my mouth to insist, but he spoke first.
“Do you know where I was all night?” he murmured.
“What? No.”
Slowly he stood, the hand he’d been rubbing over his heart skimming past his stomach, over his limp but rather large rattlesnake until he rested his palm on his thigh.
I frowned, uncertain what he wanted, why he was asking me this question, and then I saw the mark.
At the tip of his index finger, as if he were pointing to it, a crimson circle marred his skin. I had a flash of my mouth on his cock, his thigh, the need to taste, to draw him in, to mark him, to make him mine.
“You know where I’ve been, Phoenix.”
My hands clenched into fists so tightly they ached. My palms stung as my nails dug in.
I knew where he’d been, all right.
He’d been in me.
Chapter 24
I don’t know how the rock got into my hand. I had to have bent and picked it up off the ground. But I don’t remember anything until I threw it at his head.
I expected him to dodge, to duck or maybe to put up a hand with his preternatural speed and catch the thing. Instead, he just stood there and let it hit him in the face.
A gash opened on his cheekbone. Blood trickled down. He made no move to staunch the flow but continued to stand next to the cold, dead fire and stare.
He’d done something to make me think that last night had been a dream, to lower my inhibitions, to erase my unease and fear. A spell, a potion, who knew with him. Just because I was attracted to the man’s body didn’t mean that I wanted to be coerced into an act so intimate.
When I’d been on the force, date-rape drugs were rampant, and every time I’d had to deal with some poor kid who’d woken up and not known where she’d been or who she’d done, I’d only gotten angrier about it.
I stalked toward Sawyer. “What did you do to me?”
He lifted a brow.
“Oh, shut up.” He didn’t point out that he hadn’t said a word.
Blood dripped into the dirt, turning black on contact.
“Here.” I tore off an end of my flannel shirt and shoved it into his hand. He lifted the cloth and pressed it to the nick I’d made.
My gaze caught on the fire, or what was left of it— ashes, charred wood, and stalks of something I didn’t recognize.
“What is this?” I pointed.
“What do you think it is?”
“Peyote? LSD? Something funky.” I squatted and took a deep drag. Sun-warmed, fresh-cut grass. A pleasant enough scent; then my eyes crossed and colors swirled sickeningly. “You drugged me. Bastard.”
My voice sounded far way, the anger of my words, the anger that tightened my chest, not reflected in my lethargic tone.
I stood, walked to the lake, threw water on my face, then gave up and doused my whole head until the misty rainbow went away. When I opened my eyes, bare feet had appeared at the edge of my vision. I glanced up, abruptly straightening when my nose nearly brushed his dick.
“No wonder you wouldn’t let me take a gun. You knew I’d kill you.”
The cut on his face had stopped bleeding. It appeared to be healing right in front of my eyes. I remembered what Jimmy had said about killing him. The gun wouldn’t have done me any damn good.
“You didn’t seem too angry last night,” Sawyer said. “Last night you liked it.”
I swung at his head. This time he ducked, grabbed me before I fell in the water, and hauled my elbow behind my back until it ached. I bit my lip and refused to let out a single squeak.
“Do you see now why I say I’m different?” he whispered in my ear, his lips so close 1 felt them move against my lobe, causing me to remember things I shouldn’t and want them again with a desperation that frightened me. He might be a skinwalker like his father, but I was starting to agree that he had a lot of his mother in him too.
Why had he drugged me? Was he that desperate for sex? I found it hard to believe. Maybe he was an outcast from his people, but he was gorgeous—at least on the outside. Most sweet, young things could care less about the inside. If all he wanted was sex, he could have gotten it anywhere.
Which meant he’d wanted sex with me. Why? He didn’t love me. You couldn’t love someone and do what he’d done. Although considering his life so far, I doubted Sawyer knew very much about love at all.
Not that I was an expert.
He tugged a little harder on my arm, bringing my thoughts back to the problems at hand. There were a lot of them.
“All right,” I agreed, desperate for him to let me go so I could stop feeling his body aligned to mine, remembering how it moved, how I’d felt when he was inside of me. “You’re evil. Happy?”
He stiffened, but not in a way that made me think he was aroused, or even angry; it was as if he’d seen something, maybe heard something.